Swarm olfactory search in turbulence environment

Abstract

It is a challenge task for robots to tracking scents and locate odor sources because the odor plume is not continuous but consists of intermittent odor patches dispersed by the wind. In general, the space map cannot be foreknown. A novel olfactory search method employing swarm robots with limited space perception in turbulence environment is presented in this paper. In this method, both “information sharing” and “collision avoidance” are taken into account in searching for the odor source. An approximate expression of the inferred position of the odor source is established to solve the problem with insufficient environment knowledge. The moving direction of each robot is given by minimization of a free energy separately. An internal “temperature” allows active control on the exploration/exploitation balance during the search. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.